Finding meaning in an accidental universe
       |           

Welcome, Guest. Please login or register.
Did you miss your activation email?
March 29, 2024, 05:56:53 AM
News: Election Simulator 2.0 Released. Senate/Gubernatorial maps, proportional electoral votes, and more - Read more

  Talk Elections
  General Discussion
  Religion & Philosophy (Moderator: World politics is up Schmitt creek)
  Finding meaning in an accidental universe
« previous next »
Pages: [1]
Author Topic: Finding meaning in an accidental universe  (Read 837 times)
Benjamin Frank
Frank
Junior Chimp
*****
Posts: 7,069


Show only this user's posts in this thread
« on: September 02, 2022, 06:27:36 AM »
« edited: September 02, 2022, 06:32:46 AM by Benjamin Frank »

From the CBC radio program Ideas. The episode is just under 1 hour long.
https://www.cbc.ca/radio/ideas/finding-meaning-in-an-accidental-universe-1.6385397

Physicist Alan Lightman on an infinite universe and the big questions about our place in it

For those who don't want to listen to the episode, there is also an interview posted on the webpage. This is from that interview:

"I don't think that science can ever disprove the existence of God. And I don't think that religion can ever prove the existence of God. I think that you have to take the existence of God as a matter of faith. What I object to with [Richard] Dawkins and a few of the other so-called neo atheists is their dismissal of believers, their condescension to believers, and I think Dawkins said that believers are stupid and that religion is nonsense. Well, I don't think that Mahatma Gandhi was stupid, and I don't think that Abraham Lincoln was stupid. So I really find that kind of viewpoint offensive. As understood by most religions, God exists outside of time and space. And so you're on a fool's errand to try to use science, which is limited to time and space, to try to disprove or dismiss or undermine something that exists outside of time and space."

As a materialist, Lightman believes in the idea of the infinite number of universes:

"I would say in the beginning was quantum physics and relativity. So that probably doesn't sound very spiritual, but to a scientist, it is spiritual. We have very good evidence that our universe began about 13.8 billion years ago in a state of extremely high density and high temperature. But there had to be something before that. And I believe, and most physicists believe, that some kind of space and time existed before the Big Bang.

We speculate that out of that quantum foam of space-time that has probably always existed, that new universes are constantly coming into being and disappearing, coming into being and disappearing. We know that you can create matter out of energy because we've done that in our particle accelerators. And near the Big Bang, our entire universe was the size of a subatomic particle. So it's very conceivable and imaginable that some form of space and time have always existed, that new universes are constantly coming into being. One of those universes became our universe."

As Lightman just explained: that universes come into existence this way is a scientific hypothesis that is also outside of time and space so can also never be proven or disproven.

For what it's worth, I think it's more likely that there is one creator of this universe than an infinite number of universes.



Logged
vitoNova
Sr. Member
****
Posts: 3,267
United States


Show only this user's posts in this thread
« Reply #1 on: September 22, 2022, 07:21:18 AM »

I don't care what anyone says.

I think people are totally sleeping on the "universe-as-a-simulation" theory.
Logged
If my soul was made of stone
discovolante
YaBB God
*****
Posts: 4,261
United States


Political Matrix
E: -8.13, S: -5.57

Show only this user's posts in this thread
« Reply #2 on: September 22, 2022, 07:30:08 AM »

I don't care what anyone says.

I think people are totally sleeping on the "universe-as-a-simulation" theory.


Logged
FEMA Camp Administrator
Cathcon
Atlas Star
*****
Posts: 27,284
United States


Show only this user's posts in this thread
« Reply #3 on: September 22, 2022, 11:38:54 AM »

I don't care what anyone says.

I think people are totally sleeping on the "universe-as-a-simulation" theory.




So many years later and it's still one of the most beautiful things I've ever read.
Logged
Antonio the Sixth
Antonio V
Atlas Institution
*****
Posts: 57,964
United States


Political Matrix
E: -7.87, S: -3.83

P P
Show only this user's posts in this thread
« Reply #4 on: September 22, 2022, 02:49:28 PM »

Meaning cannot be "found". It can only be asserted as a conscious expression of our subjectivity.
Logged
World politics is up Schmitt creek
Nathan
Moderator
Atlas Superstar
*****
Posts: 34,251


Show only this user's posts in this thread
« Reply #5 on: September 22, 2022, 11:19:54 PM »

I don't care what anyone says.

I think people are totally sleeping on the "universe-as-a-simulation" theory.




The simulation idea is honestly more similar to conventional theism than most people like to admit, just framed extremely differently and without the stipulation that whoever's simulating us must him/her/them/itself be uncaused.
Logged
TheReckoning
Junior Chimp
*****
Posts: 6,656
United States


Show only this user's posts in this thread
« Reply #6 on: September 23, 2022, 04:31:16 PM »

Our universe is not accidental.
Logged
Pages: [1]  
« previous next »
Jump to:  


Login with username, password and session length

Terms of Service - DMCA Agent and Policy - Privacy Policy and Cookies

Powered by SMF 1.1.21 | SMF © 2015, Simple Machines

Page created in 0.033 seconds with 12 queries.